NOVEMBER NEWS – volunteer’s blog
November has been such a busy month at Svitac. We just started relax after our huge Halloween event in October and then realized that we have lots of exciting things to prepare for and organised in November!
We started with International day against Fascism, organised by Monica, which included evening workshops, discussions and sharing of ideas and perspectives. There were some great ideas shared, so thank you to everyone who contributed to making the whole day a huge success.
Tuesday’s have seen the start of Eleonore Pearson Art classes have a steady attendance of keen participants. The class have been learning about different art styles and have been experimenting with drawing and collage for the first month. The group are currently planning for an exhibition of work made so far on the 14th December. Anyone over 16 is welcome to attend and they will be preparing for another exhibition later in the year.
International day for tolerance was on the 16th of November. Increasing tolerance of participants as a prerequisite for long term peace and is a core aim for Svitac. We have been fortunate enough to secure funding from Brcko district government grants ensuring our tolerance project has been supported by an increasing stream of workshops. We have also started collecting data for a long standing research project assessing tolerance levels in our participants.
At the start of November, Ben, a new volunteer from the U.K. arrived. Ben has quickly become one of the team at Svitac and already he has impressive retention of some local vocabulary and some great ideas for workshops. Keep it up Ben!
We have also been in preparation for our popular New Year’s party on Friday the 16th of December, with students learning new songs to perform at the party and making decorations.
We have been very impressed with our young participants this month a particular well done to our 4-7 years morning group who performed ‘I can sing a rainbow’, and ‘Incy wincy spider’ in English with Makaton sign language to parents at the start of November.
We also will be delighted to host an event on Wednesday the 14th December ‘Raise your Voice’. This event is all about getting active in the local Brcko community. Please do come along to find out more about how you can get involved at Svitac. We will also have stalls for usual weekly activities and you can find out information about all our activities and daily activities at Svitac. The event will run from 7.30-9.00pm and you can find more information on our facebook page.
Do remember to follow us on Facebook (Omladinska Organizacija Svitac), Twitter (Svitac_BiH) and Instagram (svitacbrcko) for more regular updates!
Cat Rolley, Svitac EVS volunteer
